HO CHI MINH, Vietnam—Student fact-checkers under Google Project ANNIE met for the first time at an international conference at Van Lang University from December 13 to 14, 2024.
The event titled Fact-checking Odyssey: Evidence Unleashed was attended by representatives from the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, India, and Indonesia.
Students Gwyneth Aristo and Russell Aguila represented the Philippines and De La Salle University Dasmarinas (DLSU-D), along with Communication and Journalism Department (CJD) Chair and Associate Professor Isolde Valera and Assistant Professor Artin Umali.
During the conference, faculty members and students were immersed in different activities, which included a campus tour at Van Lang University and solving a fact-checking game created by the Tokyo-based gamification team Classroom Adventure.
Students showcased their fact-checking outputs to ANNIE Founder, Hong Kong University Journalism Professor Masato Kajimoto, and conference attendees. They demonstrated their creativity in correcting information using different fact-checking formats, such as magazines, videos, articles, and movies.
The last day of the conference focused on Professor Kajimoto’s introduction to the problems that artificial intelligence can bring and how it may worsen the spread of disinformation in cyberspace.
To learn more about the media landscape in Vietnam, conference participants also visited Thanh Niên news agency.
Before the conference ended, Professor Kajimoto reiterated his concern during the farewell dinner held at Hoa Tuc Saigon about how artificial intelligence would make the disinformation problem worse in the upcoming years.
“What I’m worrying about with AI technology is that it’s gonna disrupt the information ecosystem and make many people cynical because now, we really don’t know what to trust on how to distinguish authentic content from generated content,” said Prof. Kajimoto.
“If that’s the reality we are gonna face soon, being able to discern facts from fiction is extremely challenging, and I then I think many people will give up, and many people will take advantage of that situation, and I think I worry that particular doomsday scenario will become reality, and I’m really concerned,” he added.
PROJECT ANNIE is a partnership between schools in different parts of the globe, Google, and the Asian Network of News & Information Educators (ANNIE) to teach students about combating disinformation online.
